


perfect

by toosigoosi



Series: commissions! [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, i love one (1) big lesbian and one (1) smol lesbian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 09:09:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14422143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toosigoosi/pseuds/toosigoosi
Summary: Despite the rain, it was still clear enough for her to search for this mysterious tower the princess was supposed to be in. Unfortunately, her trainer hadn’t been able to give her anymore information about the princess or her whereabouts other than the basics—she was twenty-three and she lived in a tower on the outskirts of the kingdom.***maeve is an exiled thief who goes to kidnap genevieve, a princess who was locked in a tower by the king and queen.





	perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fangirlingalchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirlingalchemist/gifts).



> commission for fangirlingalchemist!

Maeve ducked her head down, then jerked sharply to the left as a second projectile shot out towards her. She whipped around, then swung out her left arm, her sword creating a near perfect arc as it sliced through the throwing stick that had been close to hitting her side. In a burst of energy, she shot forward, sword poised and ready to run through her attacker. She gritted her teeth, hands gripping the sword’s hilt tighter as she drove forward towards the attacker.

Except, the attacker was gone, nowhere to be seen as her sword thrust into empty space. Confused, Maeve skidded to a stop, still tense and ready to attack.

“You need to stop relying on your size when you attack,” came the voice of her attacker from behind her. Maeve whipped around, then grunted as she was suddenly hit in the chest. She stumbled back, coughing and clutching at her chest, but maintained her grip on her hilt.

“I don’t rely on my size,” Maeve wheezed, shooting forward towards her attacker. She slashed down once, then snarled as she missed her attacker again.

“Oh no?” A hard kick to her back knocked Maeve forward, sending her stumbling and making her loosen her grip on her sword. She managed to not drop it, but when her attacker caught her in the back on the knees, she fell to the ground and her sword slipped out of her hand, skidding across the ground. Before Maeve could get her hands underneath her to push herself up, a foot pressed hard into the space between her shoulders, effectively pinning her to the ground.

“You’re still moving too slow,” her attacker said, her voice close to Maeve’s ear as she slipped a small dagger right to Maeve’s throat. The sharp metal of the dagger was cold against her sweaty warmed skin, and when Maeve swallowed, the blade pinched slightly into her neck. “You can throw around your size all you want, but if you can’t move quickly enough, you’ve no chance of ever surviving even a slight encounter on the road.”

Maeve struggled once, then stilled when the dagger pressed hard enough into her throat to cut deeper, a small river of blood leaking down from the cut. She sighed, then went limp. “I yield,” she grumbled.

The pressure on her back and the dagger at her throat disappeared. Maeve rolled over slowly, groaning in slight pain as her attacker came into view. Her “attacker” stood above her, dagger stashed in the sheath at her belt and arms crossed over her chest.

“You don’t look happy,” Maeve said simply, sitting forward.

Her trainer’s face scrunched up. “Because I’m not,” she spat. “All the work I’ve put into training you and you _still_ can’t get a single hit on me.” Maeve’s trainer shook her head, not in disgust but disappointment.

“Maybe you’ve just not been training me well enough,” Maeve said, grunting as she got to her knees and stood up. She leaned her weight heavily on her sword, testing her legs before standing up fully straight. Despite her trainer’s intimidating personality, Maeve still towered over her by a good six inches and had to tilt her head down in order to look her trainer in the eye.

Her trainer’s face screwed up impossibly more. “Impossible,” she said. “I’ve trained people who were once sniveling and whining babies into warriors capable of protecting this Kingdom from the savages in the North. I’ve worked alongside the Castle guard for almost forty years, and I trained the current King, Queen, and all of their children the ways of the sword. I’m the Kingdom’s best fighting trainer.”

“You _were_ until you were exiled,” Maeve said. She smirked, then brushed past her trainer to walk over to the pile of gear they’d left sitting before they’d begun their sparring session. “Maybe you’ve lost some of your edge in your old age.”

“ _Oi_ , don’t get smart with me,” her trainer snapped. “This is a serious matter, and you’re treating it like it’s just one big joke. Like you _always_ do.”

Maeve shrugged as she sunk down to her knees in front of the gear pile. She slid her sword into her leather sheath then set it aside to work on packing away everything she wouldn’t need. “It just seems all this training is a bit for naught,” she said as she set aside her own sheathed daggers. A loud crack of thunder clapped above, and Maeve reached for her cloak to throw over her shoulders. “I was doing just fine on my own before you found me. I was doing fine before you decided to train me. And I promise you, I can do fine on my own now.”

Her trainer scoffed. “When I found you, you were nothing but a scrawny and gangly teenager who was barely strong enough to throw a dagger accurately,” she said. “Sure, you could fight and you knew your way around the forest, but what good are amateur skills like that against bandits or thieves or the Castle guard?” Maeve rolled her eyes, though her trainer couldn’t see it, and continued separating her gear from her trainer’s.

“I was doing fine on my own,” Maeve repeated.

When her trainer next spoke, her voice sounded much closer, having moved at some point. “I trained you into the fighter you are now, Maeve. I helped build and shape you until you could use all those natural born gifts you hadn’t yet learned to harness. I helped make you stronger than you’ve ever been in your entire life.”

Maeve stopped. She pushed her tongue against the inside of her bottom lip as she looked down. Her arms were still exposed despite her cloak, and her eyes traced over the numerous long healed-over scars criss crossing over her skin. Her trainer had a point. If she was completely honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she would’ve made it another year if she’d stayed on her own back then, let alone another twenty. And the skills she’d learned in that time from her trainer were nothing to discount either.

“Are you waiting for me to apologize to you or something?” Maeve muttered, returning to her task at hand.

Her trainer sighed. “No,” she said. She made a grumbling noise before continuing. “No, I just need to know you understand how important it is that you take everything seriously for once.”

“I take things seriously,” Maeve protested, whipping around to look shoot a glare at her trainer.

“You don’t seem to be taking this most recent mission seriously,” her trainer shot back.

“Well of _course_ I’m not taking this mission seriously,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes again. “I mean, come on: kidnapping the illegitimate daughter of the King that’s been locked away in a fucking tower on the edge of the Kingdom for the past twenty years?”

Her trainer made another grumbling noise. “ _Maeve…_ ”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Maeve said. “I’m still going to do it. Money is money.”

“And you’ll go through with killing her as well?” her trainer asked, her voice going up in interest.

Maeve stopped again. She hadn’t been paying attention and had started unconsciously checking her daggers, something to keep her hands occupied as she talked. A sign she was nervous.

“Like I said.” Maeve slid the dagger in her hand into its sheath with a loud _shk._ “Money is money.”

At that moment, thunder clapped loudly again, and suddenly it was raining. Maeve reached up to pull her cloak’s hood over her head, covering her wavy braided hair, then went to work placing all her daggers into her travel bag.

“We should be heading back now,” Maeve said. “It’s raining and it’ll be at least an hour’s walk back to shelter.” As she finished speaking, Maeve finished the knot on tying her travel bag then stood up and slung it over her shoulder. When Maeve turned around to face her trainer, she was staring up at Maeve, rain pelting the pensive expression on her face. “What?”

“You realize how serious this mission will be, right Maeve?” she asked.

“You keep asking me if I understand the severity of this mission like you’re afraid I’m going to chicken out at the last minute,” Maeve said.

Her trainer frowns. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” she said. “There’s a great deal riding on this mission, Maeve. Beyond just the money.”

“Your exile will end,” Maeve said.

“ _And_ yours,” her trainer said, reaching out to punch Maeve in the chest. “You’ll be a fully accepted member of the Kingdom, and might even be allowed to join the Castle guard. You’re better than every other sorry son of a bitch in that damn guard.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow. “And it’s all because of your training alone, right?”

Her trainer finally cracked, a small smile curving her lips. “You know it.”

* * *

 It had started raining early that morning. Maeve grumbled to herself as she pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head, batting her braid away from her neck. She hadn’t anticipated rain, but in hindsight, she should’ve known that the sometime unpredictable weather of the in-between seasons could throw anything at her. She crouched on the branch she’d spent the night sleeping on, eyes squinted as she scanned the horizon.

Despite the rain, it was still clear enough for her to search for this mysterious tower the princess was supposed to be in. Unfortunately, her trainer hadn’t been able to give her anymore information about the princess or her whereabouts other than the basics—she was twenty-three and she lived in a tower on the outskirts of the kingdom. No one knew where exactly, and—judging by Maeve’s failed attempts at searching for the tower by climbing increasingly taller trees—it wasn’t tall enough to be easily seen.

The tree she was in now was shorter, which hopefully meant she’d be able to spot the tower before the rain grew any heavier. She tugged the hood of her cloak farther down on her head.

_Where the fuck is this thing?_

Just as she was considering climbing down and trying another tree, Maeve’s eyes caught sight of something not too far away from her in the distance. A building, circular, the top of it coming to a stop just above the tree leaves that surrounded it. So not so much a building as—

“ _Jackpot_ ,” Maeve muttered, a grin spreading across her face.

She was quick to scale down the tree, landing on the ground with a heavy _thump_ as she did. Once on the ground, she took off sprinting in the direction of the tower, batting away branches and jumping over fallen logs.

When she approached the bottom of the tower, Maeve came to a stop, breathing shallowly as she scanned around the base for anything—traps, bandits, other people attempting to do exactly what she was doing.

Maeve let a hand drop down to rest on the hilt of her dagger as she walked forward slowly, still eyeing everywhere around her. When she came to the base, she reached out to feel the tower. It was relatively rough, but too smooth for Maeve to try and climb, and when she slipped out her dagger to stab at it, the material didn’t give away.

Maeve stepped back to look up the height of the tower. Then her eyes caught sight of it—a single peg that jutted out of the tower, just beneath what looked to be a window. From Maeve’s distance, the peg looked like it was pretty big.

Large enough for her rope to loop around. Strong enough to hold her weight.

Maeve got to work, unhooking the bit of rope from her belt. She made a small loop in the end of the rope, tying a tight knot to keep it from undoing itself, then stepped even farther back. She swung the rope around, breathing slowly as she aimed for the peg. She hurled the rope with a loud grunt, then watched as the loop she’d made catches on the peg. She pulled on the rope so it went taut, then circled the rope to loop it around the peg until the rope looked secure. Maeve tested the rope, yanking on it. Thankfully, the peg didn’t budge.

With renewed excitement, Mave ran up to the tower. She began climbing, using the rope to help pull her up the wall of the tower as she walked up it. Rain had started falling harder, pelting her in the face, practically blinding her as she climbed and climbed and climbed and—

She came to reach the end of the rope, then grabbed the peg. Mave grit her teeth as she hauled herself up with the peg, her fingers just barely catching on the edge of the window above. Using her strength, Maeve pulled herself up, and managed to catch the window with her other hand as well. With ease, Maeve pulled herself up and fell forward, tumbling in through the window and into the tower. Fortunately, she immediately hit ground with a hard thud, landing on her back.

Unfortunately, when she managed to come to her senses, she found herself face to face with a knife.

“You broke into my house,” the person holding the knife said.

Mave looked up the arm holding the knife to see...a woman, with silvery blonde waist length hair, dressed in what could only be described as commoners clothing of a shirt and trousers. Her face was decidedly familiar, sharing a similarity to photos of the Queen that Maeve had seen before being exiled.

Maeve smiled. “So you must be the princess,” she said. In a flash, she was up, batting away the knife and lunging for the princess. However, when Maeve moved to grab after her, she was gone. Maeve spun around, searching for the girl.

Suddenly, an arm was around Maeve’s neck, choking her and tugging her down. Maeve clawed at the arm, throwing herself to the side in an attempt to shake the princess off. Distantly, Maeve could hear the disapproving tone of her trainer scolding her for once again relying on her size.

“How did you find me?” the princess hissed in Maeve’s ear. “Who are you, and how did you find my tower?”

Maeve couldn’t speak, the arm around her throat too tight and cutting off her air. She tapped the princess’s arm, an attempt to cry for mercy, then fell to her knees as her vision began to go spotty. She was going to pass out, she could feel it.

As quickly as the arm had appeared, it disappeared, and Maeve fell forward onto her face, gasping for breath. She couldn’t even fight as the princess began grabbing the weapons out of her weapons belt. When Maeve could finally breathe normally, she rolled over onto her back. The princess stood above her, Maeve’s sword in hand and leveled at Maeve’s face, the point coming close to her forehead.

“I suppose I lose then,” Maeve said, smiling tiredly.

“Be quiet,” the princess snapped. Maeve noticed, albeit belatedly, that the tip of the sword didn’t tremble in the princess’s hands. She held it steady, firmly, like she had had practice with a sword of the same type and weight before.

Maeve cocked her head to the side. “You hold that sword markedly well,” she said. “Not the sort of thing I would’ve expected from a princess.”

Her face twisted up, and she stepped forward, the point of the sword coming closer to Maeve’s face. “Don’t call me that,” she said.

“Don’t call you what—a princess?”

“What did I say about being quiet?”

“If I shouldn’t call you a princess, then what _should_ I call you?” Maeve figured a test of t

The princess’s face grew hard again. “Enough questions,” she said. “You will answer my questions, or you _will_ perish.” To exaggerate her point, she let the tip of the sword dip down, briefly catching the skin of Maeve’s forehead. Maeve hissed, but didn’t reach up to touch the wound, maintaining eye contact with the princess.

Maeve nodded her understanding.

“You found my tower,” she said. “How?”

“I searched for it. In the trees.”

The princess’s eyes narrowed. “ _Why_ were you searching for my tower?”

“On the orders of the King and Queen,” Maeve said simply. “They’ve put out a warrant for you, either arrested and brought back to the them or killed.”

At that, the point of the sword suddenly began to tremble. Maeve watched the princess’s face momentarily crumple before resuming its hardness. “Why...Why would the King and Queen want anything to do with me?” she said.

Maeve shifted, making to sit up. She raised her hands in surrender when the princess seemed ready to threaten to stab. When she was finally sitting up, Maeve began untying the strings of her cloak.

“You're the princess, aren’t you?” Maeve asked. “The daughter they hid away.”

“I—”

“Well, regardless, they now have a son who has come of age,” Maeve continued, shrugging off her cloak. She pulled her braid over her shoulder and began working to undo it. “Meaning, they no longer see a reason to keep you alive.”

“You’re lying.”

Maeve looked up at the princess. Her eyes were wide, with fear or incredulousness, Maeve couldn’t tell, and her arms definitely shook as they held the sword.

“It seems I’m the first person you’ve run across who’s taken up the bounty,” Maeve said, continuing to deftly untwist her braid. “Even if you kill me, or let me go or whatever, more people will come. The King and Queen have offered _quite_ a reward for your head.” She shrugged, combing her fingers through her hair once it was freed from the braid. “Have you anymore questions?”

“Your...name,” the princess said slowly. She lifted the sword again, the point now coming to rest just beneath Maeve’s chin, barely an inch away from her throat. “I want to know your name.”

Maeve blinked, a little taken aback. “My name?”

“Yes.”

“Maeve,” she said. “No last name.”

The princess finally let the sword fall to hang by her side. “Genevieve,” she said, her voice tired as her shoulders sagged forward.

“Suddenly no fight in you,” Maeve commented.

Genevieve laughed humorlessly. “Well when you learn that your parents have put a bounty on your head, it’s a bit difficult to

Maeve regarded Genevieve carefully. After a moment, she cleared her throat.

“I have a proposition.”

Genevieve continued to fiddle a little with the hilt of Maeve’s sword. “Something _other_ than killing me, I would hope.”

“What if I were to stay here?” Maeve asked. “With you?”

Genevieve looked up at that, and Mave noticed her eyes were a light brown, almost gold. Her eyebrows came together in confusion. “Stay here? And what, protect me?”

Maeve nodded. “Protect you from the other bandits and hunters that will most certainly come here.”

“I don’t need protecting,” Genevieve said quickly, almost scoffing.

“Maybe you don’t,” Maeve said. “It’s entirely likely that you don’t. But I can guarantee that you won’t be able to take on some of the people who come after you. Especially not more than one at once.”

Genevieve rolled her eyes. “So then you’ll train me.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Why should I trust you? Five minutes ago, you were ready to kill me.”

“I have no connections to the crown,” Maeve said. “The only benefit I would’ve gotten would’ve been the end to my exile.” Maeve grinned then. “But the kingdom is a bit shoddy anyways.”

Genevieve laughed at that, a real laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

“So,” Maeve said. She stood up, watching Genevieve’s eyes widen as Maeve dwarfed her in height. Maeve stuck out a hand, her head tilted to one side. “Do we have a deal?”

* * *

 Life in the tower was considerably better than Maeve could’ve expected. Over the years she’d spent living and growing up there, Genevieve had retrofitted the place with a many commodities, most impressive a system that allowed them to receive fresh water from a stream in the back, the closest thing to running water Maeve had had in years.

Maeve didn’t like to admit it, but she found the additional benefit of living with Genevieve plenty worth having to occasionally fight bandits that found their tower. Genevieve was a quick learner, picking up many fighting skills with such ease, Maeve was a little jealous.

At some point, after a few months of them living together, Maeve noticed a shift in their relationship. In the mornings, when Maeve would reluctantly roll out of bed and climb the stairs to the makeshift kitchen, she would come up to hug Genevieve from behind, nuzzling her face into the top of her head while muttering a tired, “Good morning.” When they trained together, Genevieve would often times press chaste kisses to Maeve’s cheeks or forehead before they would start.

When Maeve asked Genevieve what exactly their relationship was, she’d responded by going up on her toes to press a quick kiss to Maeve’s lips.

From then on, they existed in a relationship that involved sharing the same bed, spending morning cuddling, and going on occasional excursions outside of the tower on days when no bandits would appear.

 _This is nice_ , Maeve decided. She was sitting looking out of the window of the tower, over the vast of trees that stretched out in either direction. She heard the soft tapping of Genevieve’s feet as she came up behind her, and she whipped around to grab Genevieve before she could surprise her. Genevieve shrieked, laughing as Maeve lifted her up into a hug. Her hands came up to cup Maeve’s cheeks, and she leaned down to press their lips together.

 _No_ , Maeve thought, smiling into the kiss. _No, this is perfect._

 

**Author's Note:**

> [come hang with me on twitter!](https://twitter.com/toosigoosi) i currently have commissions open, so if you would like me to write you a piece, DM me!
> 
> if you enjoyed, leave a kudos or a comment! i love getting comments and i'll do my best to reply to everyone! ( ´ ♡ ` )
> 
> this piece was fun to work on because it's entirely original! a change of pace definitely :3


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